


Via, Veritas, Vita

by Sky_King



Category: Dr. STONE (Anime), Dr. STONE (Manga)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Coping, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fear of fire, Gen, Hints of supernatural elements, Nightmares, PTSD, Pre-Slash, Self-Denial, Sengen if you squint, Senkuu is trans but it doesn't affect the narrative at all, Trans! Senkuu, ambiguous fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-03
Updated: 2020-02-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:08:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22535248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sky_King/pseuds/Sky_King
Summary: If Senkuu was sure of one single fact in his life, was that magic was not real.Surely, in a world ruled by science, there would be no space to consider otherwise. Even if the nights grew long and heavy with nightmares as real as magic itself.Then Gen comes back into his life and everything starts to unravel.
Relationships: Asagiri Gen & Ishigami Senkuu
Comments: 8
Kudos: 47





	Via, Veritas, Vita

**Author's Note:**

> Originally I was going to yeet a plunny in the plunny-drop channel over at discord, but it did NOT want to let me go.
> 
> So here we are.
> 
> Enjoy?

"Magic is not real," Senkuu declares at five years old, looking away from the television to stare at Byakuya with a tiny frown on her face.

They’re both sitting on the couch of their living room, having spent the whole afternoon cuddling as they watched first a movie, now the magician’s show afterwards.

There’s something sad and fierce in her eyes, a haunting nightmare echoing in her voice.

It makes Byakuya pull her in for a hug despite not understanding why it had upset his daughter so much.

“Of course it’s not real, sweetie.” He says, carding a hand through her short hair. “You don’t have to worry about it.”

Senkuu just closes her eyes tight.

(The stars are bright under the night sky.)

* * *

"Magic isn't real," Senkuu says, as she sobs herself awake, feeling her clothes stuck to her skin, damp with sweat and tears. Her room is still dark with night, and the heavy weight of memories.

She has enough to deal with, hanging inside her closet, nightmares in the shape of skirts and blouses, yet somehow not even that is enough to distract her from the fiery hell inside her mind.

Neon-green stars greet her sight, glued to the ceiling above her bed.

They’re high above, unreachable by the flames.

(And still she burns.)

* * *

"Magic isn't real," Senkuu sobs into his bloodied, bruised hands. He’s just woken up, broken free of the stone, naked and scared and confused.

He doesn’t recognize anything, doesn’t know what happened or why those are the first words he utters in millennia.

“Magic isn’t real,” he whispers, alone in the world. Alone with seven billion statues, alone for nearly four thousand years. "It isn't, there must be an explanation."

There's none.

(He ignores the echoes that answer his laments.)

Senkuu survives in the wilderness, barely scrapping by.

He survives, alone in a world that had long since forgotten humanity. Alone in a world that whispered to him in strange tongues, in the wind that rustles the leaves.

In a world where shadows didn’t always point against the sun, or where everything but the stone people seemed to be brimming with life. There was a certain sadness to the irony of it all.

* * *

In this strange and hostile world, he ends up bumping into a civilization lost in time.

A small village, a small community of people far more human than Senkuu had ever felt.

He’s greeted with fire of many colors, and the minerals to match. The green fire wakes up something visceral within him before he remembers it’s just a chemical reaction.

"Magic isn't real," he snarls at Chrome, putting out his pretty fires with sand and science. Using cold logic to explain all the things happening around them. "Sorcery, magic, it's all bull."

The fake sorcerer looks at him with a spark in his eye, curiosity defeating the wariness of something unknown.

(The wariness of the things that lurk beneath the shadows of the trees.)

Senkuu explains the reactions, points at each mineral Chrome had stored and gave them a name and identity. Chrome is standing by his side, bated breath and shiny eyes, as he greedily drinks everything in.

“This science of yours sounds so baaaad!” He exclaims, all hostilities forgotten by then.

Senkuu sees in him someone as obsessed with science as he is. Someone who looks at the unexplainable and glimpses the hard, tangible science hidden within. He sees all of this and finally breathes a sigh of relief.

(Breathing a sigh of relief for the first time in three-thousand-seven-hundred-and-nineteen-years.)

* * *

He teaches his ardent disciple about minerals, and chemicals and properties and rips away the blanket of mystery that surrounded this ‘magic’ of his.

Science can’t suffocate his nightmares, though.

Science doesn’t quieten the voices that call him with the wind against the leaves.

(Senkuu rolls over and pretends he’s asleep.)

* * *

After he finally breeches the village’s security and forces them to allow him in, he’s met with yet another person who seems to be enshrouded in a thick veil of mystery.

"Magic isn't real," he laughs as the villagers are awed with hand tricks, and pretty flowers.

Asagiri Gen bows to his public, then looks at him, something terrifyingly familiar in the swirling mist inside his eyes.

There’s a question in them as he turns to him.

Senkuu can’t hold his gaze.

* * *

Asagiri Gen haunts him, during the day, during the night.

"Magic is not real," Senkuu sneers, cold sweat dotting his forehead as Gen appears by his side, as if out of thin air. He blinks once, lowers his defenses and there he is, like an illusion under the sun.

"Isn't it?" He says, casually, lightly. There's a nightshade in his hands. It hadn't been there before.

Senkuu closes his eyes.

"It isn't." He replies.

He’s alone.

The flower is still there.

* * *

Senkuu is alone in his lab, thinking, always thinking. He’s calculating, numbers and equations swirling in his mind, getting dimmer and dimmer as Gen’s bottomless eyes stare at him from inside his mind.

He curses, sneers as his temper gets the best of him. The flask explodes in his hands.

The acid spills and eats at the wooden desk, the splinters of glass slip from his fingers, shattering against the floor like a sharp rain.

His vision is blurry.

Gen appears from nowhere again, helps him clean and bandage his bleeding hand.

They don’t clean up.

There’s nothing to clean.

Gen does not ask, Senkuu offers no explanation.

He pretends not to see the sadness in his eyes.

It’s not like he has any explanation to give anyway.

* * *

As if mocking his words, his litany, his nightmares continue.

"Who is she?" Gen asks, breaking the asphyxiating silence of the night. His figure, sitting by his side is barely visible, as Senkuu gasps himself back into awareness.

It takes him a moment to realize it’s not the whispering wind, but a very tangible man by his side.

"Who's who?" He rasps out, once the air settles inside of him. He doesn’t know why he asks. He doesn’t want to know.

"The woman in your dreams."

"What?"

"Is she your mom?" His voice is soft, so soft, crawling over his feverish skin like an unwanted blanket.

Senkuu squints.

Was she?

She couldn't be.

Her eyes were like two wells, dark and bottomless and decisively not human.

“She's not real." He finds himself saying.

Despite the curtain of darkness between them, when Gen turns to him, he looks sad. "Don't you miss her?"

Senkuu bites his lip, and clenches his fists.

_Why should I,_ He thinks, the words lodged in his chest.

_She’s not real._

When he blinks, Gen is long gone.

He’s alone.

Alone, with the whispers at his back.

(Senkuu curls up and covers his ears. It doesn’t make it go away.)

* * *

“What do you want?” Senkuu snapped, not turning to look at the mentalist. He’s eyeing five grams of calcium carbonate for a new experiment of his, and he’d rather not have to weigh it again.

“Good morning to you too, Senkuu-chan!” Gen replies, waiting patiently for Senkuu to finish before sauntering over to him, a finger to his lips. “Are you alright? Your voice is a little hoarse.”

Senkuu clears his throat, licks his lips. “Peachy. What do you want?”

“Ah, I’ve just been a little worried about you…”

“Why?” Senkuu asks, even though he _really doesn’t want to know_.

“You’ve been crying.”

“Have not.”

Gen is silent.

“Then maybe you should be.”

It sounds more like a taunt than anything so Senkuu actually drops his pencil to round on him. God, he’s exhausted. His voice is tight. “ _What do you want?!”_

Gen just lifts a single finger, held high as if asking for his attention.

It lights up in lavender-colored flames.

Senkuu flinches so violently he bumps against his table and almost upset everything on it.

Cold sweat dots his forehead, his throat feels tight. "Stop with the gimmicks, mentalist."

"Don't you ever wonder why you fear it so much?"

"What?” He says with a snort. His voice trembles. “’Magic’?”

Gen's eyes are unsmiling.

"Fire." He replies.

Senkuu doesn’t get the chance to decide if he wants to ask. Gen puts out the flame, and rolls up the left leg of his pants.

Senkuu stiffens upon recognizing the pattern of scars. So painfully familiar, like a mirror on pale skin.

"You were born from fire, Senkuu-chan. Your birth was surrounded by ashes. I know. I was there. Have you never wondered why I never asked your name?"

Senkuu’s eyes never stray from the scars so like his own.

Gen’s eyes are sad. "Fire hurt you. But you can't pretend it doesn't exist."

"But Gen," Senkuu pleads. "Magic isn't real."

“Then we are all just fantasies,” Gen replies and for a second Senkuu could have sworn the fire was burning behind those dark eyes.

Senkuu’s alone.

(He’s always been.)

* * *

Senkuu avoids him, to the best of his abilities.

It’s probably more due to Gen’s smallest shrewd of compassion rather than any real skill that manages this.

But try as he might, it doesn’t leave him alone.

It whispers at him at night, breathes with him, crawling up his spine like a sense of foreboding.

(Like the stars dotting a darkening sky.)

Senkuu ignores it.

But it doesn’t ignore him.

* * *

The tension is in the air, like a violin string getting pulled tight, too tight, a twang of lament in the silence.

It coils inside of him, until one night, his nightmares drown him.

They drown him, and he fights back.

The fire reaches the earthbound stars.

(And so he burns.)

The string breaks.

The night goes up in flames.

Memories rush to him.

His childhood home, going up in flames.

A home he did not remember; with a man he did not know the name of.

Byakuya had said that had been his biological father.

A gas explosion.

A gas pipe had broken.

It had-

_But it hadn’t smelled like gas._

Senkuu gasps and takes a lungful of acrid smoke. He scrambles to his feet, frantic eyes trying to find a way out of the fiery hell under the cold stare of a thousand stars.

Someone’s calling him.

****

**_Firechild_ ** _._

“Da…?” Senkuu whispers, then a flame licks at his ankle.

“Senkuu! Senkuu, are you up there!?” Chrome is screaming for him, voice drowned by violent coughing.

Senkuu tries calling out for him, but chokes on the smoke, the fire. There’s fire everywhere. He finds the trapdoor, descends the stairs but the fire roars stronger when he tries reaching Chrome.

The boy winces, his clothes heavily singed, his wide eyes panicked. He mouths his name, or maybe he’s screaming at him, but Senkuu can’t hear anything above the fiery symphony around them.

_Chrome._ Senkuu struggles to scream, to cross the fire, to get him to safety. Safety, away from the flames, away from the fire.

_Fire, so much fire._

_“…out of ashes and fire… bad omen, bad omen indeed.”_

Gen was there.

_A small kid, dressed to celebrate the birth of a new child. Face carved in fear of the fire brought by violence. Staining the sacred ceremony red._

Gen’s face is pulled into an angry mask.

He grabs Chrome and they both disappear in front of Senkuu’s smoke-hazy eyes.

Senkuu feels tears running down his eyes, borne out of irritation, out of the fiery smoke.

_Cursed child._

_Firechild._

Born in fire.

“Will die in flames.” Senkuu whispers, his vision darkens, his eyes roll up.

The world burns.

It is cold.

* * *

“’msorry,” Senkuu mumbles as soon as he’s awake to the kind hand that had been washing his face with a rag. He blinks swollen eyes to stare at Gen.

His eyes are dark.

The mist has settled.

(Senkuu wants it back.)

He begins to sit up.

“Senkuu-chan,” Gen protests, gentle hands on his shoulders. “You shouldn’t be getting up-”

“M’fine,” Senkuu slurs, pushing forward until he was sitting up in a nest of blankets. It smelled of nightshades.

“Oh, are you.” Gen says, brushing hair away from his forehead and fixes his clothes. When Senkuu doesn’t wobble or fall on his back, the mentalist pulls back. His lips are a thin line.

“Chrome?” He asks, voice feeble and broken.

“He’s fine.” Gen mumbles, eyes downcast. “He’s a little burned, but the Priestess is tending to him. He was more worried about you, actually. Said the fire began up in the observatory, where you were.”

“I don’t… understand…” Senkuu whispers. “It couldn’t have been a gas leak.”

The soft hands stop.

“ _What?_ ” He whispers.

“The… explosion…”

The hands that had gently checked over him, firm in a slap that rattles his world.

He looks at a livid Gen, unsure of what to think.

"I'm sorry," he manages to say. "I don't know what caused the fire."

Gen's eyebrows knit together, an entire symphony of grief in that gesture. "I don't care about that. Accidents happen."

"Then what?"

"What upsets me is that if I hadn't been there you both would have died."

Gen blinks, a tear hanging on his eyelash.

It does not fall.

It glimmers like a diamond under the sun.

"What hurts me is that your refusal to believe in magic almost got you both killed."

"I'm sorry," Senkuu says. Tears well up in his eyes.

He had the words on the tip of his tongue.

But in the face of a burned and exhausted Gen he couldn't let them through.

His body burns with a former memory. Heat. Fire. Can't stop it, can't contain it, his dad-

Someone's screaming.

He couldn't say it anymore.

Because if magic is real...

Senkuu flinches, eyes wide and horrified. He shakes his head as if that would stop his thoughts. Gen frowns and tries reaching a hand for him but Senkuu’s gone.

* * *

“What are you doing here?” Senkuu mumbles, too tired to care.

He’s curled up under the comforting shadow of a nameless tree, smelling of fire and ashes and a broken home.

Gen sits by his side.

“You know what happened when you were born?” Gen whispers, hands around his knees, eyes into the horizon.

It’s still night outside.

The stars stare at them, a billion years away.

Senkuu is silent.

“Do you know what a firechild is?”

Senkuu flinches, looks at him like a scared child who had just lost his home.

“We were attacked.” Gen says, soft so soft, weaving his words into the night. “Your birth was interrupted. The ceremony was interrupted. And you, a child conceived under starlight, a child of starstuff, was born in fire.”

The silence is fragile, an entire universe swirling between their shared breath.

“Firechild, a cursed existence.” Gen says, and even though the silence shatters into a gasp, a sob, he only threads his fingers through soft hair, rubbing a tense back. “It was not your fault, Senkuu. Those names hold no weight, no power. You are Senkuu, the thousand skies, the Starchild.”

The epithets, the names light up something within him. Something that had grown up with him, breathed with him, crawled up his spine, like stars under his skin.

But it doesn’t soothe him. Doesn’t calm him down.

"It was all my fault." He sobs, hanging his head, letting the guillotine of memories be the judge of his sins. "I did it, it was me."

Gen is suddenly, frighteningly sure he did not have the full picture still. "Senkuu-chan...?"

“If magic is real…” Senkuu breathes, and his skin is speckled with stars, a solitary constellation in the immensity of the night. “Then I did it.”

_Nightmares. He was being chased. The teapot was loud, so loud, he just wanted it to-_

_Fire so much fire, fire in his eyes, in his mind, fire in his lungs, he’s choking. The smoke blocks the stars on his skin._

"I killed him." He breaths.

(The stars were bright under the night sky.)

"I killed my father."

Magic is real.

It had always been.

**Author's Note:**

> Confusing? Ambiguous? Wtf just happened?
> 
> xD
> 
> So in your opinion, is magic real? lol
> 
> Let me know what you thought of it?


End file.
